Jonathan Akwue's presentation at Like Minds 2010. Includes what Social Media can learn from Hip-Hop and how Social Media saves lives

1. Making Connections
An Outsiders View of Social Media
Jonathan Akwue

2. Who am I? Confession I’m not a social media guru

3. Illustration
Graphic Design
Youth Engagement
Service Design
Social Marketing
Communications strategy
Management Consultancy
I’m a Director of a Management Consultancy - but I didn’t get here straight from Harvard or MIT -
the back drop to my life has been urban culture, youth engagement, and working in many parts of
the creative and communications industries

4. Digital thinking and innovation
Digital Public is part of Engine, the largest independently owned communications company in the
UK

5. This is an outsiders view. I want to start by talking more broadly than social
media to think about the impact of Digital technology on society more generally

6. Digital technology
doesn’t always make
things better
Image courtesy of http:/ www.officemuseum.com
I’m sure when this photo was taken at the Computing Division, Veterans Bureau,
Washington DC, 1929 they thought it was state of the art, and things would only get better..

7. 80 years on, what’s changed?
...but 80 years on, what’s really
changed?

8. A better banking system?
We used to queue inside banks, now we queue outside

9. “Press 1 for more options...”
Improved call handling systems? How long does it take to find the help you
need?

10. Digital solutions don’t
always benefit the
customer
Does anyone actually find these self-service tills easier to use? If not, who gets
the benefit?

11. We are willing to make
compromises to save money...
We can live with no frills if we receive the benefits

12. The Google generation is fighting back, using digital against corporations. As we
will see, this presents a key challenge

13. We use the
things that make
our life easier
91% of iPhone users would recommend the device to others. This creates the
potential for a massive channel shift.

14. Myspace was right...
...it’s their space, not yours
Key characteristic of Social Media is its ability to connect people together

15. Urban Mashup
I was lucky enough to grow up during one of the biggest cultural movements to
emerge in the 20th Century

16. It started on August 11th in 1973 at a High School event in New York, DJ Kool Herc
did something that gave birth to a global movement... he started mixing

17. What the web can learn from Hip-Hop
This lead to a new cultural form called Hip-Hop. But what can its development
teach us?

18. Hip-Hop culture: B-boys, DeeJays, MC’s (Rappers), Writers (Graffiti Artists).

19. Most of us know that in 1977, the Apple II was among the first successful personal
computers and was responsible for changing the way we use computers

20. However you may not be aware that a year later the Technics SL-1200MK2
changed the way we interact with music. The base model is still in production 30
years later

21. The Akai S900 (1986) was the first truly affordable digital sampler. Hip-
Hop producers were so grateful, one of them named a song after it.

22. The idea of taking some one else’s music, sampling it, remixing it, and
republishing it was considered theft. But among the community it
operated like a creative commons license. Music industry Lawyers found
a way to make the Hip-Hop producers pay, and arguably stifled
innovation in the process

23. Rap music gave a voice
to a generation...
When MC’s emerged as the dominant voice of disenfranchised African-
Americans, Rap music really took off

24. ...but what they had to
say shocked the
mainstream

25. The same thing is happening with Social Media

26. Social Media draws
together Like Minds...
...but some Like
Minds are more
dangerous than
others
There are darker uses for social media that create new challenges

27. Some unlikely winners emerge
Social Media and Hip-Hop have also created some unlikely winners. Granted, a
kid from Harvard always had a better chance of making it than a kid from a
poor housing project in New York. But who would have guessed that MarK
Zuckerberg would become the youngest ever billionaire, and Jay-Z would have
the most number 1 albums by a solo artist on the BillBoard 200 in history?

28. However, by 2006 the Rap artist Nas declared what others were already
saying privately. Hip-Hop was dead. What happened?

29. “Hip-Hop is Corporate
America’s QVC”
Crass selling out by artists to corporate America meant that Hip-Hop was
losing touch with its key audience.

30. This is a key lesson for Social Media to learn from, try to hard to make
money by infringing on people’s spaces and your users will punish you.
Ironically, it seems Myspace didn’t learn this lesson. It’s one Twitter will
need to

31. One of the important cultural shifts that Hip-Hop helped to foster was the
idea of an Open Source culture where people are free to take what other
people have made, and build on it. This has created what Lawrence
Lessig calls “Remix culture”

32. But with all this remixing going on - how does anyone make money? This is
what Matt Mason calls The Pirate’s Dilemma. What do you do if people expect
everything on the web to be free, and they don’t want advertising either?

33. “At the end of the
day, the police, the
social services, the
government, they
can all f**k off
because in this
society we are the
government. They
don’t do nothing
for us.”
There’s another problem. Some young people are becoming increasingly
disconnected (Nick Barham).

34. How do you connect to people
that don’t want to know you?
This is a key challenge for corporations, but even more so for public services -
because no body really wants to talk to government unless they’ve got a complaint

35. Provide services in their space,
not yours
Digital Public’s Service Innovation model - Systems thinking to solve complex
problems

36. Preventing Teenage Pregnancies using
Social Media
Is it possible? Absolutely.

37. More detail on the Service Innovation
approach

38. Over a two-month period, more than
46,000 users engaged in webchats with
health information advisors
This was not a banner ad campaign. We built a virtual sexual health clinic, and
put the front door in Bebo. The average webchat lasted 12 minutes, and users
reported making changes to their behaviour based on the conversations.

39. Engaging families
We have also used social media to help provide support for families. Working
with the Department for Children, Schools and Families to develop a set of new
services for parents

40. Parents want and need support but:
• They do not want advice on parenting from the government
• Support at times that suits their needs and lifestyles

42. Started life as Parent Know How - now Family Information Direct

43. Funded a whole bunch of
services

44. Supporting
parents on the
edge using
Social Media
One organisation in particular demonstrated how you can use social media to
reach parents on the edge of a breakdown

45. This isn’t using social media to tell people what you had for lunch. Netmums
created a virtual drop in clinic that has actually saved lives. It wasn’t even our idea
- it was theirs. We just created the opportunity for them to expand it.

46. What does
the future
hold for Massive Opportunities
Social
Media?
We’re just beginning to scratch at the surface of what is possible. The
opportunities to connect people to people to transform services is something
that we are still getting our heads around. It has massive implications for
business, government and the Third Sector

47. I’m just glad to be a part of it - aren’t you?